The Facebook

Since 1975, every elected B.C. premier has resigned from office. Of the 8 who have served since then (not counting current Premier Christy Clark) only 3 – Rita Johnston, Dan Miller, and Ujjal Dosanjh – escaped this fate, though none of them were actually elected by B.C. voters, and none of them served for more than one year. And finally, the percentage of elected B.C. Premiers involved in a political scandal since 1975 (either during, or after their terms)… is also 100%.

Sad, but true; through laziness, recklessness, complete incompetence, or a combination of the three, The Dependent‘s “By the Numbers” archive is empty, containing exactly zero new statistics. By no small coincidence, the percentage of Dependent editors who currently have a hangover is close to 100.

According to Statscan Data, the B.C. Government spent a mere $50 on provincial lands dedicated to “educational and cultural value” in 2010. This is, in fact, far more than the $0 spent on the same lands between 2005 and 2009. What the $50 was spent on is not revealed.

According to city statistics, Grandview-Woodland has one of the highest concentrations of aging housing stock in the city, with 60 per cent of all homes there built before 1975. Fifty-seven per cent were built before 1946, and of that, 44 per cent were built between 1911 and 1921. Astonishingly, 28 per cent of the area’s buildings were built before 1911.

Recent CoV research has revealed that residents of the V5L postal code (bordered by Burrard Inlet to the north, 1st Ave. to the south, Clark Drive in the west, and Nanaimo St. in the east) are more than twice as likely to be artists (five per cent), or employed as “cultural workers” (12 per cent), than the rest of the city (at two and seven per cent, respectively). In fact, the Grandview-Woodland area is already recognized as the city’s cultural and artistic hub, with 10 per cent of its residents employed in occupations related to “art, culture, recreation, and sport” (compared to six per cent in the rest of the city).

According to Vancouver Coastal Health’s numbers, despite having hosted 1.8 million visits, and an average of 587 daily injections since it opened in 2003, not a single fatality has occurred at Vancouver’s supervised injection site.

In a recent global survey by Ipsos, it was revealed that close to half of single Canadians are staking their future happiness on finding a partner. The survey, which also involved more than 21,000 people in 23 other countries, found that the phrase “My relationship with my partner or spouse does or can give me greatest happiness” was agreed with by close to half of all respondents.

Of equal interest, 27 per cent of people already married also stated that finding a partner would bring them life’s “greatest happiness”.

According to a 2009 Youth Smoking survey by Statistics Canada, roughly half of Grade 10-12 students nationwide (both male and female) have tried a cigarette at least once in their lives. Of those, 15 per cent of males and 11 per cent of females considered themselves “smokers”, smoking an average of nine cigarettes per day.

According to slightly stale data lifted from the CoV website, 43 per cent of Metro Vancouver’s population commutes into the city for work, leading to 58,000 cars recorded entering the city each morning in 2006. Of that, roughly 38,000 entered downtown. And, while the number of commuters entering the city has dropped sharply since 1981 (down from 62,000), the number of drivers entering downtown has remained unchanged. According to the city’s website, Vancouver boasts the lowest number of driving commuters in Canada.